Today it is safe to say that more marijuana smokers, medicinal and recreational, know about the coming Super (Bud) Bowl in two weeks than know who Jack Herer, known as the hemperor, is or why there is a California initiative named after him. This reporter had the pleasure of meeting him not once, but twice, and he remembered me on that second visit. Not bad for a stoner.

More than any one man, though supported by unique and pro-pot friends/family, Jack Herer, almost single-handedly compiled the history and legitimate studies done about cannabis that Du Pont, W.R. Hearst (granddad to Patty), and Harry Anslinger tried to bury. They and their kind would have succeeded too. The Man arrested hundreds of California and Oregon ballot petitioners from 1980-88 who tried to bring the weed issue up before voters, an American right.

To keep the word alive, the first printing of The Emperor Wears No Clothes was in May, 1985. Becoming quickly known as the ‘hemp bible’, the following printings became revised, updated, and expanded into over 300 pages, cover to cover. The complete subtitle says it all: The Authoritative Historical Record of Cannabis and the CONSPIRACY AGAINST MARIJUANA …and HOW HEMP CAN SAVE THE WORLD!

Hailed as ‘the most talked about underground book of the last decade’ (Hugh Downs 20/20), ‘marijuana Americana’ (Scientific American), ‘a triumph for the open minded’ (Bill Maher), and reported by the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, and the OC Register as a cure for the planet, much of what is being discussed today in modern marijuana journals like LA JEMM and others, still lies undiscovered . Here is one small condensed quote from Jack’s landmark work:

‘The NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) reported that marijuana smoke is the only medicine we know of on earth that can fully stop the brain damage after a stroke occurs. About 600,000 Americans have stokes a year, 5,000,000 worldwide. Yet just one puff of a marijuana cigarette right after a stroke could the severe damage which may occur. Even ditch weed from Iowa will stop the aftereffects of 95% of all strokes…’ – (2007)

As you read that brief quote made seven years ago, try to calculate the number of people that information could have helped versus the amount of money spent instead on medicine, hospitals, and nursing homes. Jack knew and he knew the system even then. At our first meeting while we smoked some [then-new] Jack Herer strain (2003) in Topanga Canyon, Jack stoned me with the words about medical marijuana. By 2009, the last time I saw him before he roached out a year later, I had a reply for him along with the last name of Mary Jane (Green).

Jack Herer wrote CCHI before he died and little was re-tweaked for the current ballot initiative. He was a visionary who also equated darkness to the ‘midnight’ (Matt 25:1-13).

“My fevent hope is that we are merely seeing the darkness before the inevitable dawn.”